Mac OS X for Unix Geeks

Managing Groups

NetInfo stores information about groups in its /groups directory. This is different from the /etc/group file, which is consulted only in single-user mode.

To list all of the group IDs (GIDs) and group names for the local domain, invoke nireport with the NetInfo domain (., the local domain), the directory (/groups), and the properties you want to inspect—in this case, gid and name:

% nireport . /groups gid name
-2      nobody
-1      nogroup
0       wheel
1       daemon
2       kmem
3       sys
4       tty
5       operator
6       mail
7       bin
20      staff
25      smmsp
31      guest
45      utmp
66      uucp
68      dialer
69      network
70      www
74      mysql
75      sshd
80      admin
99      unknown

Tip

Although the flat file format is called group (after the /etc/group file), the NetInfo group directory is /groups. If you forget that last s, NetInfo will look for the wrong directory.